Former Vice President Dr. Mohamed Jameel has said that Jumhoree Party (JP) has the right to hold their own presidential campaign just as former President Mohamed Nasheed is holding his own campaign.

Dr. Jameel said this in response to Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) Chairperson Hassan Latheef, who said that MDP will win this year’s presidential election with the help of those currently supporting MDP and that an opposition coalition is not needed to achieve that goal.

Dr. Jameel, the current administration’s first vice president, recently joined JP as party leader Qasim ibrahim’s political advisor. In a tweet on Thursday night, he said that every Maldivian citizen wants to remove President Abdulla Yameen and that therefore everyone is working towards the same goal.

He said that just as MDP’s candidate Nasheed is proceeding with his campaign, JP also has the right to hold their own campaign and that the opposition coalition has said nothing to the contrary.

At the MDP press conference earlier on Thursday, Chairperson Latheef said that MDP is not worried over JP leader Qasim forming his own opposition coalition without MDP. However, he reprimanded Qasim for announcing his shadow cabinet.

Noting that MDP is the largest opposition party, Latheef said that the citizens want the party to announce its own candidate.

Dr. Jameel, who is Qasim’s shadow vice president, was a member of Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) before forming his own party. But due to lack of support, he switched to now-ruling Progressive Party 0f Maldives (PPM) and became President Abdulla Yameen’s running mate and later his vice president. He was then removed as vice president by his own party for disloyalty and has since been living abroad, during which time he had also been a senior official of the opposition coalition that included MDP.